Hot Fairy Tales, or Can I Write a Novella?

Samhain (my publisher) recently put out a call for submissions for a new anthology of hot fairy tales. They want 20-25,000 words, which is novella length.

I wrote my first novel in 2001–a 60,000-word opus targeted toward the Silhouette Desire line, with much trepidation because it seemed so long. I mean, if you write in 12-point Times New Roman like me, that’s 180 pages of stuff you’ve made up about people you’ve made up. And it all has to make sense together.

I’d been a technical writer for years, I’d written magazine articles including a six-page thesis on satin (the fabric, it was for a sewing magazine), but a novel is completely different. I did it, although it was a typical beginner’s book–utterly unworthy of publication. And now I have several manuscripts under my metaphorical belt, all more than 250 pages long.

Can I write a novella? Well, I’m going to find out. I’ve started my story, which I’m calling “Finding the Briar Rose,” which is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty. It’s science-fiction romance, of course, because everything I try to write ends up as science-fiction romance.

If I can write a page or so per day (in addition to working on my work in progress), I’ll still have something done before the deadline, February 10, 2010. Let’s see how it goes.